Thursday 2nd September, 2010
TIME TO IGNORE THE SIGNS.

For years developers have considered abandoning all their advertising and erecting 100 metre stackboards instead on the basis their sales staff suggest all visitors come from signs. Matt Fleming argues this isn’t the problem it was.

I have spent much of the last 30 years of my life trying to persuade the massed ranks of frontline sales staff to ask their visitors, "where did you see our ad?"

The idea was that the implication in the question was enough to stop both the visitor and the sales negotiator ticking the "signs" box and then quickly moving on to the important bit - the sale.

John Wanamaker, the trailblazing 19th century US Department storeowner, famously said, "half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half".

Throughout the 80s and the 90s this became my mantra. I laboured non-stop, traveling the country and addressing audiences of various sizes, quite literally begging on my knees that they recognise the importance of this process and make a point of not just asking the question, but asking the right question. I even produced a DVD of my presentation on the basis that there were just too many sales negotiators and not enough time.

So, the very idea that I have suddenly eschewed this noble enterprise might sound somewhat surprising, especially against the backdrop of a property market that is ‘tricky’ to say the least. However, the fact is that the customer journey simply isn't what it was. The way that media habits have changed in the last five years is quite extraordinary.

Ascertaining any single point of contact your prospect made as he progressed along his buying journey is now just one piece in a complicated jigsaw. And the fact is, in virtually every case, enquirers that arrive at one of your sales offices are there as a result of messages from a whole range of different sources.

As part of our programme of monitoring trends and attitudes among UK homebuyers, we regularly hold discussion groups in different parts of the country at our agency offices. During our last series of groups we discovered that the average exposure a prospect has to selling messages or information about a new development of interest to them is no fewer than five before they make physical contact with your sales staff! (It’s worth noting that this information has a number of implications over and above media selection. For example, you can safely assume that, in today's noisy media environment, your visitors are more educated about your product, availability and prices than ever before. More to the point, they’ll be well aware of the alternatives on offer too.)

The likelihood is that they will have seen your product on Rightmove, Zoopla, SmartNewHomes or a similar portal, been to your website, spoken to the local estate agent about what you have an offer, maybe even seen one of your ads! It is a fair bet that they will have made more than one visit to your website before they decide to speak to you and they will have traveled there via a number of different routes. In all probability, they will have ‘Googled’ the area for ‘new homes’ and maybe picked your site out in the ‘Sponsored Links’ or, if you’re really switched on to search, in the natural (organic) listings, although these generally tend to be dominated by the portals which invest substantial sums to maintain those positions.

It is worth making the point that, for all the traceability of the Internet, unless you have more sophisticated analytics in place than the standard Google offering, you will never know the full extent of this customer journey. Be sure that, whoever is looking after your digital activity, the relevant code gets applied to your messages so that you can genuinely assess the efficacy of all your online marketing activity.

So where does that leave our Sales Negotiator and her inclination to mark down all her visitors to signs?

It’s time for us to take a more sophisticated approach. So instead of worrying too much about the critical question, we need to educate our frontline staff (often the only people in the business who meet the prospects) to do two things. First, capture their data, particularly their email address. This is essential, once we know who they are and how we can reach them quickly and cheaply we can control the messages. Secondly, talk to them about their media habits. What do they read? What websites do they use? How can we reach people like them?

The grown up version of my “please ask them the question – I beg you!” presentation emphasises the need for a more sophisticated dialogue. It may well be that the last thing your visitor saw were the signs, but where else did he go on his journey? Does he read the local paper? What websites does he visit? Did he go on Google? What search terms did he use?

The world has changed and media fragmentation has created a complicated array of options for every advertiser. I believe a black and white response to the question “where did you see our ad” is nowhere near as relevant as it once was and those businesses that can enable their front-liners to see the benefit of quality data, and open a channel for them to feed that back to the marketers, will truly reap the rewards. In this market it’s all about share and in today’s media environment that means delivering relevant messages to genuine prospects in the most apt and appealing form.

So when your next prospect pitches up with his iPad in one hand and his Google phone in the other, when he asks about the deal you publicised in your recent email campaign, when he tells you he has already downloaded the brochure from your website… there’s no need to worry when your negotiator says he came from the signs.